Corporate Feudalism took a huge hit in France and Greece over the weekend. After experimenting with Tea Party like austerity in Europe for several years, European voters figured out it doesn’t work. After watching their quality of life diminish at the hands of international Corporate Feudalists who caused the problems in the first place, French and Greek voters said no more. European voters seem ready to reprioritize and put the needs of middle and working class people ahead of the interests of giant corporations and their owners. Will U.S. workers be able to see past the multi-billion dollar ad campaigns that win elections in the U.S. these days? Or will they vote against their own interests and elect money puppet politicians who are no more than the hired help of the rich?

Mitt Romney claims that job growth is slower than in past recoveries because of President Obama’s policies. The truth is that with the implementation of Corporate Feudalism job growth is exactly where the Corporate Feudalists expect it to be. Jobs that can be outsourced to other countries have been shipped overseas. Giant corporations sit on historic amounts of cash and demand wage concessions from workers, while at the same time expecting the workers to do the jobs of three or more people. Tax rates are also historically low for people who get their income from stocks and other investments, or hide their money in offshore accounts. This is what Corporate Feudalism looks like. A few lords sit in their palatial estates while everyone else fights for crumbs.

A few decades back Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich were the faces of Corporate Feudalism. They began the long process of convincing the middle class that the government was the enemy and that giant unregulated corporations were the answer to all middle class problems. Now Paul Ryan and his tea party budget have become the poster child for corporate feudalism. In rather direct terms the Ryan budget claims government is bad and unregulated capitalism is the answer. End or severely cripple successful government programs that help the middle class and give the money to the rich. This is the most easy to understand road map for how to move the US the rest of the way toward Corporate Feudalism that exists. The unregulated and minimally taxed rich become the feudal lords and the formerly middle and working class become the new serfs. Wouldn’t it be nice if the corporately owned media would occasionally point out that the Ryan budget is basically more of the same failed ideas used during the republican ruled Bush Administration. That led to the great recession.

If your goal is to eliminate the middle class and replace it with a Corporate Feudal Republic expanding health care coverage is a move in the wrong direction. In a Corporate Feudal Republic a very few (the 1 percent for example) control everything and the rest are little more than modern day surfs. While US conservatives have made incredable strides toward implementing Corporate Feudalism for the past thirty years any attempt to expand something as basic as health care to regular citizens must be fought intensely. The 99 percent have gotten quite used to loosing ground and that’s the way the Corporate Feudalists like it. Having middle class people on the streets fighting for the interests of giant insurance companies and against health care coverage shows just how far the Corporate Feudalists have already come.

The purpose of this blog will be to discuss Corporate Feudalism. What it is, how it works, and most importantly how to reverse it. The definition I use in Fifteen Steps is:

Corporate Feudalism—A system in which the owners and directors of a few giant, often multinational corporations exercise the kind of unlimited social, economic, and political power once held by feudal lords. This system diminishes or eliminates the middle class and divides the country into the very wealthy, now known as the 1 percent, and everyone else, the 99 percent.

It’s easy to see examples of Corporate Feudalism in the US today. Take Wall mart for example. The workers are paid less than a living wage, often jerked around in part time positions with little or no access to the benefits of full time labor while the Walton family reportedly controls as much wealth as the bottom thirty percent (about ninety three million six hundred thousand) of the US population. Why pay a decent wage to your workers if you can keep it all for yourself?